Would like your opinion on a strategy game concept

[Danimal]

Hello everyone, i have been a lurker of this portal since a long time (i remember the page theme to be the black dude and psionic girl from ufo aftershock kissing, when i joined).

The thing is, i have a strategy game concept that i would like to share with you, and hear your opinions before starting working on it, to know what other strategy expert gamers think about it, and more importantly if you think it would be fun to play.

 

So, if you dont mind reading a bit here it goes:

 

Guidelines: A mix of some genres,

-Base management like Xcom (research, building...)

-Unit development based on promotion (somewhat like disciples)

-Map roaming with your troops (blade and mount, kings bounty style)

-Tactical battles disgaea style (fast and furious), but with elements like bonus or minus depending on terrain the unit is standing (montain, grass, water...)

 

Setting:

A phantasy medieval realm as the scenario, there is a war bettween the kingdom and undeads, undeads have half the country under their control, theres a final confrontation, the kingdom wins but the old king dies in the battle, the heir prince slays the necromancer leader and wins. But after that, is betrayed by his uncle and the different faction leaders (knigths, mages, thieves, church) and burned at the stake. Then, they proceed to turn on each other and declare independence of their feuds, leaving the uncle with just a loyal feud.

Change of scenario, hell, an old devil is dying and leaves to their heirs his belongings, the older son gets everything, but to the medium son he leaves a property contract of a mountain in the human world, that he won serving under certain necromancer as payment. The daugther gets nothing. The medium son has to run from the palace or die by his older brother, and so he teleports to the mountain, just to find its a piece of rock without anything valuable, but in there he finds a tribe of retarded goblins, which he migth use to become someone again...

Later he will hear the death screams of the prince at the stake and offer him a contract, he helps him recover the kingdom and gets special treatment in the future as payment.

 

Mechanics:

You have a base (dungeon), in which you can recruit globins as troops, build new rooms once researched, rooms that will either alow your troops to be promoted when they get to a certain level (training rooms, treasure room, tavern...) or produce equipment (weapons and armor in the workshop, magic trinkets on the forgery...).

Research is produced by the goblins shamans, which are also figther troops, many topics are get by mass torturing enemies captured on missions (riding from knigths, magic from mages...).

 

Troops start as basic goblin and promote when leveling depending on profesion branch (melee combat, ranged, and magic), this troops can be equipped with different armor and weapons depending on proffesion, which varies on power and quality and variety depending on your research level(think on iron weapons first, steel next, magical ones...).

 

From those troops the player chooses a team, whose size depends on the prince command level, and start roaming the map mount and blade style, chasing enemy groups represented by a single unit.

From those battle resources are awarded (gold, iron, bones, leathers, precious stones, souls) used to improve the dungeon and crafting.

 

The combat will be on a hex table, each hex can be a different terrain, whit different statics, like walking cost, bonus to damage or defense...(somewhat like battle for wesnoth)

Attack turns are decided based on an AGI attribute from all units (ally or enemy), and units can have skills based on race or proffesion (more attack for humans on plains and hills, more defense to goblins in caves and dungeons, reduced walking cost on forest for certain units like human forestkeeper or goblin stalker).

I want to make the combat fast, so damage output will be high, especially in the opposing factions, since i want the goblins to appear like underdogs, number will be their only strength at first.

 

The prince also win exp from this (he doesnt figth, hes a supporter) to advance on a warfare discipline granting him battle comands and spells.

 

The story would be driven by special missions consisting on assaulting towns and fortresses, which are prebuilt and can only be found by torturing certain enemy troops. Ultimately reclaiming the throne and destroying the now arch-lich necromancer.

 

So, what do you people think? and thanks if you have been patient enought to read everything.

[FullAuto]

-Base management like Xcom (research, building...)

 

 

The real trick is going to be making all areas of the game enjoyable. I've seen it said many, many times that players want rid of menus and don't want to be bothered with logistics, but I don't think it's true. I think we're happy to do it if we're actually in control, and it effects other areas of the gameplay in easily perceptible ways (e.g. run out of a certain type of ammo in JA2 and a favourite weapon becomes useless) and if it's not laborious. As an example, I loved sorting out kit for my mercs in JA2, customising their loads, weapons, equipment, armour etc, ensuring ammunition supply, shopping around. The boring bit was having to use mercs as mules, load them up with the maximum and have them go between point A and point B constantly.

 

Perhaps it is just me being a bit sick, but I honestly enjoy knowing I decided everything about my troops and how they go to battle, I enjoy knowing they have all the right kit tailored just so for the task. This separates fighting a war (JA2, X-Com) from merely having some battles (the vast majority of games which just push you out the door and you hop from battle to battle). If you're going to do this, you need to put the player in charge of the entire organisation and balancing it is very difficult (X-Com didn't have it right and arguably couldn't with the tech of the time, the redeeming feature is you essentially have access to unlimited resources and money if you play the game competently).

 

-Unit development based on promotion (somewhat like disciples)

 

I disagree with this. Your leaders aren't always your best fighters, and if you're leading, you should be busy leading, not fighting. There should definitely be a promotion system, but it shouldn't be a simple vertical ladder. This is a more modern mindset than your average faux-medieval fantasy scenario includes, I suppose, where you get to be a leader by being the best fighter, but ultimately this is nonsense, you can be a superb fighter and as thick as shit.

 

What you want is a system where your leaders are promoted and gain rank, granting something like an area-effect buff to nearby units (morale, leadership, courage, etc) but there is also lateral development where a unit can start out as the equivalent of a private and over the course of the whole war move up no further than corporal, yet be an awesome fighter and your go-to killer, because it receives lots and lots of combat-focused stat improvements as it levels up (agility, strength, defence, attack, etc) instead of gaining rank. Think of it like this: who's better at fighting, a private who has spent ten years in the front line of an infantry unit, or a captain who has spent ten years commanding an infantry unit? They are two very different roles, and I think it's about time a game realised that. Units should be able to do both and shouldn't be locked in to either vertical or lateral development, but choices must be permanent.

 

There's also an issue of scale here, are units going to be individuals or groups of goblins?

 

-Map roaming with your troops (blade and mount, kings bounty style)

 

This could be excellent if you only have a vague map to begin with, with only the largest features noted, and you then explore the map as you roam, finding villages and hamlets, camps, forts, caves, forests, springs, etc. Replay value guaranteed if the map is randomly generated each new game.

 

-Tactical battles disgaea style (fast and furious), but with elements like bonus or minus depending on terrain the unit is standing (montain, grass, water...)

 

Quite like the sound of this, though fast and furious isn't how I'd describe Disgaea (it is for a TB game, I suppose). Terrain, weather, and time of day should be included (good old goblin night vision advantage perhaps?).

 

The story would be driven by special missions consisting on assaulting towns and fortresses, which are prebuilt and can only be found by torturing certain enemy troops.

 

I don't like the sound of this although it makes the game design far easier. Towns and fortresses that are somehow secret doesn't make a lot of sense to me, I can see secret locations being possible (and very desirable) but I think they should be things that are hard to find and a reward for someone who actually puts some effort in (e.g. random attacks on your bases from a tribe of trolls, and if you're careful you can follow them back to their caves/a wood guarded by stealthy elves containing a magical spring etc) and not something that you have to do to complete the game.

 

If you're planning a war, and you don't know the locations of your objectives, it's time to go away and give yourself a stern talking to, because you're an idiot.

 

I think the campaign should be entirely free-form, with no must-have objectives, and that way it's different every time you play. Enemy forces should change depending on your actions (e.g. suppose you use a lot of cavalry in your battles. Soon the enemy starts showing up with lots of spear-wielding units, which present cavalry with severe problems. Or perhaps you raid an enemy fort a lot, so they decide to build it up to a castle). You could have enemy characters that have kingdom-wide effects, for instance (e.g. a famous war hero who boosts their recruitment). Now, killing them is difficult, and brings plenty of rewards, but if you like you can ignore them and simply kill the necromancer.

 

The enemies should have an ISTAR network just like yours, with scouts, patrols, outposts, and spies keeping an eye on the enemy and acting as 'eyes'. You then direct your armies using information gleaned from ISTAR, so you can fool and trick your enemy, and be fooled and tricked in turn. It shouldn't just be about who has the biggest army. Remember that you're never ever aiming to have a fair fight.

 

It's a very ambitious idea, certainly, and will be difficult to do well, and it will be very easy to get wrong. How many games have done base management. tactical battles, and a strategic overview in the past ten years? I can think of a few. How many have done it right? I can't think of any.

[Danimal]

Thanks for your reply, i know its really ambitious, but i have the time and will complete eventually once started.

 

Regarding your comments, i plan to use individual units as troops, when they are recruited they will be "born" with some innate modifiers (strong, stupid, slow, dextrous... ) which tips them from the start to any of the proffesion branches. Each profession will have a set of skills that will make it better than the previous one or at least specializate it.

 

The inventory system i plan will be somewhat complex but straigthforward, you have the troop, depending on class he may equip up to 4 types of armor (leather,chain,scales,plates), weapons (swords,pikes,hammers,maces,bows...) and magical trinkets, so your level 10 goblin warrior can equip leather and chain armor and use axes and maces. But you upgrade it to goblin guardian, he will be able to wear now only plate armor and use pikes.

 

Experience will count as well so a level 30 goblin warrior will always be stronger than a lv 20 goblin guardian, even if the guardian can wear heavier armor. But you will want to upgrade the soldier anyways, since a lv 30 guardian have better stats than a lv 30 soldier. Think of a growt chart for each class, plus the innate modifier, higher class have better stats growt than lower ones.

 

Besides each class will have associated perks, example, your goblin archer can use bows and wear leather, but if you promote it to chamaleon, he will still use the same equipment but get the perks forest travel, camouflage and poison arrow. Promote it again to Stalker and he gets all the former, and is able to use now chain armor and gains the "ambush" perk.

 

I think you get the idea now, its good to promote them, since you dont loose efficiency, you just specialize them, and jack of all trades classes are present to avoid an army of overspecialiazed units.

 

Weapons and armor will be varied as well, firstly you will only be able to produce low quality iron weapons, then medium quality iron ones, and when enough research is done (read as mass torture of dwarfs and squires) even magical steel ones so your worshop guys never gets bored. Each one with different stats (armor loweres AGI based on type and weigth, pike give more defense, swords raises DEX, iron heavier than steel, hammer heavier than any other weapon class...)

 

Resuming you just fill 3 spots on the inventory, but will have lots of variety to do so.

 

Regarding leaders, there is going to be only 3, which a fixed promotion tree, and a unique class for each of them. They will join after completing special missions, and they will be strong warriors on their specialization, but suck at the others. The aura thing is a good idea, thanks. But they are warriors as well since the real leader is their commander, the fallen prince, who does nothing but order and cast some buff or spells from time to time (based on his level, warfare specialization and some kind of mana system), so they should be called heroes better?, Heroes of migth and magic can be a good reference here.

 

Important point i forgot, the devil revives all fallen ones at home, good thing since theyll fall like flies.

 

 

As per the base, i want it to be important but not hog all your time, you use it to research, craft, review stats, building new rooms that give access to unit promotions or better equiment, receive messages, promoting units. Functional and clean(not really, we are talking about globins, expect lots of rats around).

 

 

"This could be excellent if you only have a vague map to begin with, with only the largest features noted, and you then explore the map as you roam, finding villages and hamlets, camps, forts, caves, forests, springs, etc. Replay value guaranteed if the map is randomly generated each new game." Exactly my thoughts, battle map will be generated based on the terrain where the battle started, so if it was a mountain expect lots of hill, mountain and snow hexes. If it was on undead territory expect lots of dead soil and swamps. I guess i will use a % roll to create each hex based on where the each battle take place.

 

As for race skills, along with proffesion perks, each race will have their own:

 

Humans, bonus on plains and hills

Goblins, bonus on caves and dungeons

Undeads, bonus on dead lands and water

 

Neutral races and mercenaries:

Elfs bonus on forest and scrubs

Dwarfs bonus on dungeon/caves and mountains

Animals and foreign mercenaries bonus depending on species.

 

Also negative modifiers when entering hard terrain, for example goblin guardian enters a forest hex, he will have his movement reduced and Dextery due to hard terrain , but the forest provides him with a bonus to defense against piercing weapons (arrows), an elf enters the forest, he will not have any negative modifier, gets a defense boost AND a bonus to his stats due to race skills. Now enter into the forest a goblin chamaleon, since he has the "forest traveller" perk he has no negative modifiers and gets the defense bonus.

Same for caves, mountains and such.

[Danimal]

I like your suggestion of visible cities, guess i can make the bigger ones visible since the start, but they will be so well protected first by patrols on the map, and them by their detachments that you wont be able to destroy them until your troops reach a good level or you get a unit needed to do the job (a siegue engine for example to take down a castle gate full of archers).

And them i can have as you suggeted hamlets,treasure caves, shrines, that can be discovered by torture of wandering around the map.

 

i had also thougth of a "revenge system" if you kill too many units of a faction you will create "heat", once it reaches a certain point, they will send armies tailored to kill you depending on which troop you use the most and follow you to the ends of the country, city patrols can also be generated like this to give a fair figth.

 

The only thing i dont like too much are base missions, i think there will only be a few story scripted ones, in case the enemy send a uber party that overpowers you easily, and instead have them outside sieguing the place and waiting for you to come out (maybe your mountain is such a maze they dont want to enter?).

 

 

Faction leader events, i like it, i could do the church leader to declare a crusade against the undead, so you will be catch in the middle, or the mage leader to summon magical beings everywhere creating chaos arount their feud or the knigth leader doing levies which makes them having double units on all armies... That sugestion is quite good.

 

As for the Istar net, im sorry but i think that is too much for me, just planned to have a magical scout you can upgrade to:

- see further

-Give information on enemy armies, firstly you cant see nothing about them, later how many troops, their troops composition, levels...

 

Just think its a country divided on four sides, besiegued by undeads, roamed by bandits and beasts of all kinds, and not only are goblins considered vermin but there are lairs everywhere. Total chaos are the words, impossible to keep a proper inteligence.

 

My god, such long post, thanks again if you read this. And who knows, maybe the thing can turn out into a decent game.

[Danimal]

Sorry, i know its impolite to bump topics, but i would like to know what you think of my last post, FullAuto, you there?

[FullAuto]

The inventory system i plan will be somewhat complex but straigthforward

 

I don't think it can be both. :-/

 

Experience will count as well so a level 30 goblin warrior will always be stronger than a lv 20 goblin guardian, even if the guardian can wear heavier armor. But you will want to upgrade the soldier anyways, since a lv 30 guardian have better stats than a lv 30 soldier. Think of a growt chart for each class, plus the innate modifier, higher class have better stats growt than lower ones.

 

You might have a problem here. The approach you have is initially at least, one of sheer numbers overwhelming your enemy. This isn't the way a lot of gamers like to play, indeed it's become famous as Zerging and the like. A majority (or sizeable minority) prefer to develop their units, create elites, invest time and money crafting them etc. Eventually, your mass of cheap units will evolve into more expensive veterans, okay, that's fine, but then you're presented with a situation whereby your goblins are better than the humans (e.g. a veteran unit of goblin spearmen versus a unit of human spearmen, and the goblins win) which causes dissonance, because as everyone knows goblins aren't a match for men. Stereotypically, in fantasy scenarios, anyway.

 

So I would suggest A) Using a different race or B) having the goblins level up at some point into orcs. I'd recommend B, because if you're going to have professions and whatnot, sorry, big deal, every fantasy setting with some RPG elements has those, so you need other stuff too. You need to stand out. Think about additional layers of complexity and crafting like clans (e.g. Red Hand Clan orcs are berserkers and gain a damage buff if they fight unarmoured), battle experience affecting skill/perk development (e.g. a unit who has been on the end of archery for 10 battles in a row gains a 'Porcupine' perk and ignores the morale effects of being shot at by archers), unit naming, banner/uniform design, etc.

 

As far as unit creation goes, start off with half a few default templates (cavalry, swordsmen, archers) and let players create their own so once they have a favourite type of unit kitted out just the way they want, they don't have to keep going through the unit creation process. Have a limited number of slots available for individuals, so you can include better leaders, veteran fighters, mages, standard bearers etc in each unit, each one with advantages and disadvantages.

 

Then you can assign x units to an force and have them move about the map, with movement speed being that of the slowest unit modified by the number of individuals in the army and the number of units, e.g. you send out one small cavalry unit, it can move very quickly. You send out an army composed of two dozen units and hundreds of individuals, it's going to move slowly.

 

i had also thougth of a "revenge system" if you kill too many units of a faction you will create "heat", once it reaches a certain point, they will send armies tailored to kill you depending on which troop you use the most and follow you to the ends of the country, city patrols can also be generated like this to give a fair figth.

 

This is agood idea. You could have neutral factions within or along the edges of the kingdom, dwarves, elves, a guild of wandering merchants with whom you can do business and trade for information/resources. Or you can also attack them, rob them etc.

 

As for the Istar net, im sorry but i think that is too much for me,

 

This leads me on to the strategic level and something I'm probably going to bore people to tears about. I'm not saying you need to replicate a full information network, I'm saying your game will include one of one sort or another, so it's better to be aware of it and make conscious design choices that improve gameplay. In X-Com, for instance, there's an ISTAR network, mainly composed of your radars and hyperwave decoders, with help from your craft, and the agents who discover bases sometimes. Yet I don't think the Gollops explicitly discussed ISTAR networks. It's just how you discover information about the enemy. So to include such processes would make a big difference, otherwise you're going to have a strategic map with omniscience, e.g. every enemy unit and location shown. Which is simple, but isn't really very characterful (perhaps such a map could be a very rare relic or something?).

 

It doesn't have to be complex, you could start out with building watchtowers that give a certain radius of cover, a force of goblin rangers that spread throughout your territory, an abstract spy system, paying neutral factions for advance warning (e.g. dwarves let you use their mountain watchtowers in exchange for gold, elves let you know of enemy movement through their wood if you leave their trees alone). You could end up researching things like aerial scouts, goblins who ride giant bats and provide a lot of very good coverage, but they aren't perfect. Small units, perhaps with a mage with a cloaking spell, could be stealthy and very difficult to spot, so then you have another area of gameplay open up, with raiding behind enemy lines, hit and run attacks, ambushes, distractions, guerrilla warfare, etc.

 

The computer should have to run a campaign just like you. It shouldn't be omniscient, and okay it can cheat a little (e.g. knowing the player's overall strength, but not how they're composed or where they are), but it should have to manage resources just like you do, so that warfare is not just a constant back and forth over a goal that you won't reach for a long time, but over tactical concerns.

 

1) If you capture a mine, the computer loses out and you gain. So perhaps you have lots of gold now, and the computer can't buy what it wants, so it starts raiding you with lots of small forces, stealing resources.

 

2) You capture a lightly-defended castle that guards a passage to the nearest plains. While the castle itself is nothing special and is in fact very difficult to hold, because it's in poor shape, as long as you hold it the enemy does not have access to the massive herds of horses roaming the plains and so has difficulty creating/maintaining cavalry units.

 

There should be an interlocking resources/economy/tactical/strategic web, ideally. Perhaps goblin cavalry ride wolves, and you need to keep them fed, so you use herds of horses for that, feeding your units and depriving the enemy of mounts? You have a gold surplus, you buy all the steel the dwarves are selling, so the enemy has to use iron weapons or set about producing their own steel, which takes longer and is more expensive.

 

How the player goes about winning the war should be up to the player. The units, armies, tactics etc should all be of his creation.

 

Just thinking out loud! Or on the internet, anyway.